When manufacturing wood products, such as kitchen cabinets, furniture and the like, it is frequently necessary to laminate a thin veneer to the wood, or underlying subsurface base material such as compressed board or the like. It has been found preferable to cut the base material to the desired shape and then apply the veneer. The veneer is subsequently shaped or cut to the exact configuration of the underlying subsurface. If one attempts to cut the subsurface and veneer at the same time, the veneer frequently chips along the edge. Therefore these steps are necessary to prevent the splitting and chipping of the veneer from the subsurface along the edge being cut.
The art has provided expensive machinery to attempt to cut the veneer along the edge of the subsurface material so that the veneer and the subsurface material have a common smooth edge. To date, the machines developed have required more than one cutting blade or knife to cut the veneer in the configuration of the subsurface material when the subsurface material is not simply a straight surface. For instance, the door of a kitchen cabinet is rounded on the end. When cutting the veneer adhered to the side of the door, it is necessary to be able to cut the veneer in the exact round shape of the door's end. None of the prior art machines have provided a subsequent cut of veneer within 0.001 inch of the configuration of the subsurface material.
Furthermore, prior machines can cut only a predetermined radius and hence are not able to cut random configurations as required on many product base materials. These machines are limited to specific lengths and predetermined configurations. Such limitations have either required large expensive machinery which only partially overcomes the problems of cutting fast and accurately, or cutting by hand, which though frequently is more accurate, requires particular skills and hence is costly.